May 13, 2016

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has announced plans to co-host four public workshops to spur public dialogue on artificial intelligence and machine learning, and to learn more about the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence, according to Ed Felten, a Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer.

These four workshops will be co-hosted by academic and non-profit organizations; two will also be co-hosted by the… read more

May 13, 2016

Researchers at the Universities of Bristol and Western Australia have demonstrated a practical use of a “primitive” quantum computer, using an algorithm known as “quantum walk.” They showed that a two-qubit photonics quantum processor can outperform classical computers for this type of algorithm, without requiring more sophisticated quantum computers, such as IBM’s five-qubits cloud-based quantum processor (see IBM makes quantum computing available free on IBM Cloud).

May 13, 2016

Moogfest 2016, a four-day, mind-expanding festival on the synthesis of technology, art, and music, will happen this coming week (Thursday, May 19 to Sunday, May 22) near Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, with more than 300 musical performances, workshops, conversations, masterclasses, film screenings, live scores, sound installations, multiple interactive art experiences, and “The Future of Creativity” keynotes by visionary futurist Martine Rothblatt, PhD. and virtual… read more

May 11, 2016

A human-safe lifelike telepresence robot with the delicacy and precision needed to pick up an egg without breaking it or thread a sewing needle has been developed by researchers at Disney Research, the Catholic University of America, and Carnegie Mellon University.

The secret: a hydrostatic transmission that precisely drives robot arms, offering extreme precision with almost no friction or play.

May 11, 2016

Google has just released two powerful natural language understanding tools for free, open-source use by anyone. These tools allow machines to read and understand English text (such as text you type into a browser to do a Google search).

SyntaxNet is a “syntactic parser” — it allows machines to parse, or break down, sentences into their component parts of speech and identify the underlying meaning).… read more

May 10, 2016

Smartphones and other digital technology may be causing ADHD-like symptoms, according to an open-access study published in the proceedings of ACM CHI ’16, the Human-Computer Interaction conference of the Association for Computing Machinery, ongoing in San Jose.

May 10, 2016

A University of Washington team of computer scientists and engineers has built what they say is one of the most highly capable five-fingered robot hands in the world. It can perform dexterous manipulation and learn from its own experience without needing humans to direct it.

May 10, 2016

Here’s an innovative idea: create new proteins by simply “sewing” together pieces of existing proteins. That’s exactly what researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have done to design new “cellular machines” needed to understand and battle diseases.

Published today in the journal Science, the new technique, called SEWING, was inspired by natural evolutionary mechanisms that also recombine portions of the 100,000 different known… read more

May 9, 2016

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials in China have used a combination of machine learning, supercomputers, and experiments to speed up discovery of new materials with desired properties.

The idea is to replace traditional trial-and-error materials research, which is guided only by intuition (and errors). With increasing chemical complexity, the possible combinations have become too large for those trial-and-error… read more

Medical error in hospitals is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. after heart disease and cancer --- an estimated 210,000 to 400,000 deaths a year

May 9, 2016

Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. after heart disease and cancer — an estimated 210,000 to 400,000 deaths a year among hospital patients — say experts in an open-access paper in the British Medical Journal — despite the fact that both hospital reporting and death certificates in the U.S. have no provision for acknowledging medical error.

“Second skin” polymer could also be used to protect dry skin and deliver drugs

May 9, 2016

MIT scientists and associates have developed a new material that can temporarily protect and tighten skin, and smooth wrinkles. With further development, it could also be used to deliver drugs to help treat skin conditions such as eczema.

The material is a silicone-based polymer that could be applied on the skin as a thin, imperceptible coating, mimicking the mechanical and elastic properties of healthy, youthful skin.

A potential breakthrough for regenerative medicine, pending further studies

May 6, 2016

EPFL researchers have restored the ability of mice organs to regenerate and extend life by simply administering nicotinamide riboside (NR) to them.

NR has been shown in previous studies to be effective in boosting metabolism and treating a number of degenerative diseases. Now, an article by PhD student Hongbo Zhang published in Science also describes the restorative effects of NR on the functioning of stem cells… read more

Bioresorbable devices promise to help eliminate the risks, cost, and discomfort associated with surgical extraction of current devices

May 6, 2016

Two implantable devices developed by American and Chinese researchers are designed to dissolve in the brain over time and may eliminate several current problems with implants.

University of Pennsylvania researchers have developed an electrode and an electrode array, both made of layers of silicon and molybdenum that can measure physiological characteristics (like neuron signals) and dissolve at a known rate (determined by the material’s thickness). The team used the… read more

May 5, 2016

A computer model of how bees use vision to avoid hitting walls could be a breakthrough in the development of autonomous drones.

Bees control their flight using the speed of motion (optic flow) of the visual world around them. A study by Scientists at the University of Sheffield Department of Computer Science suggests how motion-direction detecting circuits could be wired together to also detect motion-speed, which is crucial… read more

Could transform telecommunications by increasing speed and reducing size of cell phones, WiFi, and other devices

May 5, 2016

Columbia University engineering researchers have developed a new “circulator” technology that can double WiFi speed while reducing the size of wireless devices. It does this by requiring only one antenna (instead of two, for transmitter and receiver) and by using conventional CMOS chips instead of resorting to large, expensive magnetic components.